Last Sunday I suffered from the sort of hangover I had previously assumed to be the sole preserve of Peter Fallow, the dipsomaniac journalist in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. In other words I had assumed, as Fallow often does, that to feel this bad you had to be very close to death.

It has taken me until now to discover exactly what was wrong with me. As ever, when I am confused by something and want it explained in way that even a sore-headed layman like myself can understand, I go to How Stuff Works.

I have used this site whenever I felt bewildered by electricity, computers, storms and so forth, and thus largely regarded it as a technical resource. And this, to be fair is what it started as. Lately, it has broadened its remit to include pretty much everything.

So thanks to their 11-page article on alcohol abuse, I now know it was the excessive glutamine levels in my brain that prevented me from sleeping properly thus causing the fatigue and anxiety. The excess hydrochloric acid in my stomach caused me to feel nauseas.

I won't attempt to sum up the rest of the article. Suffice to say, the medical term for hangover is veisalgia, from the Norwegian word for "uneasiness following debauchery" (kveis) and the Greek word for "pain" (algia). Something my wife told me on Sunday, which is why I am now reading How Women Work.